Global, Environmental & Climate Crisis, I’m there, I finally get it, I mean a thorough and clear understanding  of exactly how it came about, why it is getting worse and how serious it really is. I’ve reached the biting point of understanding, 7 months ago I knew nothing, just that it was happening and we should all drive less, recycle more, buy organic or from sustainable sources. Hotter summers and colder winters….ice caps melting…sea levels rising, turn lights off, recycle more and a very vague idea of what it all meant, but it didn’t mean I didn’t care; I just didn’t have the time to become more educated on the subject. I think that maybe I was a typical example of what most so called socially responsible people are like….I walked to school instead of driving…I tried to do a bit, but overall it wasn’t on my agenda every day.

That all changed last May when I attended a close friend’s father’s funeral, something changed that day, something changed me that day. He was a scientist, he was brilliant but very modest and I never knew his life’s story, interests or beliefs until his life journey had been completed. By then it was too late, it was the biggest wakeup call I have ever had, and it was my first real experience of life’s and earth’s fragility. I could see how unconscious we all are in today’s society and that passiveness is our biggest problem. It was the first time I realised science had a very quiet voice.

Since June of 2011 I have been avidly reading environmental articles, networking, drawing, painting, writing,  watching videos, reading blogs….and generally trying to soak up as much information as I can about  the truth behind climate, global and environmental changes and warnings. I have even built this blog, ready to play an active role in helping to improve the situation. Only I keep hitting the same problem….will all my efforts make a big enough difference and what exactly am I trying to do? Is it too late and should I just ignore the problems like everyone else seems to be, after all none of my friends or family seem that interested in me spouting on about environmental changes? Reading the evidence I feel like hell is it too late! As long as I haven’t given up, I have not lost!

The most important truth that I have learnt is that climate change is absolutely not a natural cycle that would have happened anyway, we’ve done so much damage no one, scientists include,  have the answer for how exactly the earth is going to react and the severity of her reaction and how soon it will happen…but they do know the problem is getting worse and the reaction, that being climate crisis is happening faster than they thought it would a few years ago….and really our time is up, that environmental disaster bomb could go off any day and without any further warnings.  What scientists can tell us are their predictions based on their monitoring of the earth’s changes and past cycles the earth has gone through. I have literally spent days wading through very scientific and factual information which if honest was pretty hard going for someone who is not that scientifically or mathematically minded. Needless to say I preserved and I finally feel like I ‘get it’ and that I am in a position to help other people ‘get it’. Or to at least try and inspire others to understand.

I will try my best to explain what I have learnt and why I have drawn the following conclusion.

The Climate Crisis is based on scientific findings and facts. It is presented as scientific facts, findings and warnings, it is based on evidence. Yet most of us still continue to ignore these warnings and carry on regardless with our materialist and wasteful lifestyles, without a single ounce of regret or remorse. I think that globally the general public’s attitude is similar to that of smoker who doesn’t want to quit smoking. They know it is harming them and will eventually catch up with them, but for now they are enjoying basking in the delights of a filthy habit and no one is going to spoil their fun or take their crutch away from them. I know, I was a heavy smoker and I see a similar pattern, I could not be told to change my ways, I was too scared that I would not cope. That fact that I could ignore such health warnings doesn’t in fact indicate that I have a weak will; to the contrary it suggests that I have an iron one to ignore such information. But when I became pregnant with my first child, I was desperate to stop and I eventually found the courage to stop and you know what? It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, sure I miss the odd cigarette now and again, but my life is so much better, easier and free-er without them.  I see similar struggles on my journey to becoming an activist of neutralising my carbon footprint. It is going to require effort, sacrifices but more than anything I need to do it for my children. I want to do it for my children; I want to do it for myself and others too.

No one likes a party pooper, a Mr Negativity, a dictator, a panicker, a moaner, a know it all or a droaner…………..this is how many people perceive environmentalists to be….banging on about how the world is going to end and that we are killing the earth and the end is nigh. I have proof of this, it’s all over the internet, negative comments about Al Gore and his campaigns and volumes of people generally wanting him to shut up and stop trying to make them feel guilty. “Drill baby drill” – keep that oil coming…ignore this fool. It’s a dull message that never changes. I see a glazed look come over my parents, my in-laws and sometimes even my husband’s face if I start talking about my concerns….they don’t get what I see,  and to be honest I think they wish I’d go back to a corporate lifestyle, earn good money and shut the hell up on the subject. But then I see my children, the people I am meant to protect and when the day comes, and it will, when they ask me “Mummy why didn’t you do anything to stop this?” – this is my biggest fear, how can I look them in the eye and tell them, I knew, we all did but we didn’t want to know?  That is why I won’t let this go; I’m onboard and fully intend to ride this out til my last breath.

So this is the problem I see:

I believe the Global Climate Crisis needs passion and creativity, it needs a personality and it needs more than anything a positive outcome, it needs HOPE! It needs to be packaged and sold like a bottle of sweet brown fizzy liquid that has taken over the world, aka Coca Cola. It needs to be a brand that is recognised, trusted and believed in. It needs the arts and creative professionals to convey messages of hope and inspiration that will get everyone involved and everyone understanding just how imperative it is that they change their lifestyle choices and habits. Designers, writers, artists, musicians, actors, film directors…anyone with creative talent needs to step up and use it to influence and become a catalyst for science and the scientists who are failing to reach people. It is down to the ‘creatives’ to understand their environmental responsibilities and carve a new arts and design movement, that actually moves people’s minds and shows them a clear path to hope and global climate recovery.  Putting on a concert for one night to remind people of what is happening is not enough, it needs to be constant! Creatives need to make people feel good and embrace this lifestyle change, to spark a desire to mend earth.

Imagine If you were to move the bin in your kitchen, it will annoy and inconvenience you for a day, by day 2 it will be easier….after a week it will be second nature. It’s the same principal with changing people’s environmental ways; it’s an inconvenience that can easily become second nature and a very satisfying way to live life!

Do I still have your attention?

Then here comes the science bit, a good place to start for anyone who would like to see a brighter future for themselves or their children……………

Contraction & Convergence or C&C is a UK driven climate campaign, started by musician and Director of GCI Global Commons Institute,  Aubrey Meyer.

It has taken me 3 days to read through all the information I have amassed with regards to Contraction and Convergence and below I have written my own interpretation of what I think it means.

The underlying principles and theories behind the founding of the GCI – Global Commons Institute are based on governments globally needing to impose strict legislations on countries in the developed world to reduce carbon emissions. So that we can protect the developing world from the effects we have caused on their environment through our own greed and wastefulness.

C&C (contraction and convergence) founder Aubrey is striving to make people see how we can sway public opinion into taking a reactive approach to global climate crisis. He keeps company with scientists who provide all the evidence that global warming is taking place, yet this evidence is also creatively connected with philosophy and maths. Over time intellectual types such as Pythagoras closely studied nature and could see a deep connection between maths, nature and music – one word that springs to my mind here is rhythm! There is a definitive rhythm running across science, nature, maths and music that connects everything. But essentially everything can be traced back to a number and a series of numbers such as a pattern; visually these patterns and numbers give beautiful outputs. Such as the world you see around you, also the music you listen to is a series of notes and vibrations that when written on paper form some kind of mathematical calculation.

A sunflower for example looks the same as any other sunflower; its visual rhythm is always the same. An outer circle of golden yellow leaves, an inner circle of dark brown bushy matter.  You could find out the exact mathematical calculation for reproducing a picture perfect copy on a computer. So if you took a photo of a sunflower and loaded it onto your computer, what is visually displayed on your monitor has a mathematical and scientific calculation running behind it. It has its own rhythm!

Nature too must have its own rhythm for producing the same plants over and over again, each species having its own unique number, pattern or rhythm. Simplifying this further, everything could essentially have its own number, even us humans. Numerology, the study of numbers and their supposed influence over human affairs, has long been studied and taken seriously and developed by philosophers such as Pythagoras. It’s not just cosmic fortune telling websites that we see today, Pythagoras, donned the Father of Western Numerology combined the mathematical disciplines of Arabic, Druid, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Essene sciences.  Since then it has continued to evolve, but the validated system – Chaldean numerology is the one they use. Even people’s names can have a rhythm and hold true meaning. This is something I am yet to learn about, but I totally see the logic of maths and numbers running behind everything that we see and experience.

The point is that we no longer seem to be running in rhythm with the earth, we are banging our own drum and it’s totally out of tune and deafening us, so that we can hear nature’s delicate one. Our rhythm and patterns don’t flow from nature; we’ve tried to replicate nature without any thought for what we take from nature. We are living in ‘virtual times’, we want it today and we build it tomorrow with not a second thought about any repercussions. We have plastic veneer instead of real wood, we chat online instead of in person, and nearly everything we do requires power of some kind. But that power comes from our earth’s resources and we never stop and think it will run out, we beat our drums about what we deem as more important….”the mortgage, Christmas, money, new car, money, money, money…..spend, spend, spend.”

What happens to earth’s pattern, rhythms and beats whilst we bang our drums? Well they get interrupted of course. Starting at the top, the North Pole, if you can imagine our beat being so loud with all the drilling of oil, burning, collective cars moving globally, crap being churned out, stuff being moved and general tampering that we do to the world, it’s no wonder we see changes.

We’ve all seen images or video footage of the Arctic, stillness and peace is what you would expect. But we are now seeing movement, great chunks of ice melting away or sliding somewhere unexpected.  Animals environments changing, unexpectedly they have to adapt and do so quickly, but not all can do so. They die out and then we hear of species under the threat of extinction. Yet we feel no reason to reproach ourselves because the developed world is currently only experiencing mild climate changes. Here in the UK if we get hotter summers I expect most people would be happy about the fact they can sit in the garden and get a nice healthy tan! Ah but with the extreme of hotter summers comes the other end of the spectrum….more rain too. More rain leading to floods, to which the UK is already prone and insurance companies I believe now do not cover natural disasters in their policies….hmm I wonder why?

Let’s go over to Africa, a few degrees more heat there and a few inches less rainfall means droughts and sweltering heats, more disease, more hunger and more deaths and this is what really tips the balance.  Imagine that balance tipping just a little bit more everywhere. The UK completely falls apart if we have snow…people panic buy bread, milk etc what if we had 2 months of snow?  Or if that balance suddenly aggressively shifted and we had a month of continuous rain…imagine what that would mean for developing countries as we continue to beat our drum, louder and louder.  We drown out nature all together, she can’t heal herself and natural disaster on a global scale occurs. It’s no joke, the next decade we will be seeing this and hearing of it more and more….

So how do we change things? Contraction and convergence – we need to back track. We need to know the facts, understand what differences we can make and which choices and actions will make the biggest differences to lowering our carbon footprint.

I believe this is where art, design and creative media can make a difference, how I can personally make a difference.  I think art and design could and should be the catalyst to deliver the message that science and mathematical evidence is trying yet failing to communicate about the imminent and pending environmental disasters we face. And the ways we can fix them.

As Aubrey of GCI has written in his paper on contraction, convergence and ‘stringularity’, which conveys a wonderful idea that we can all be ‘in-tune’ and ‘in-time’ together. He calls it ‘stringularity’ because when we half the length of a string at constant tension, we double the rate at which it vibrates. So if you will all me another analogy, that’s the same as two people taking one stride but covering twice as much ground as one person taking 2 steps. One drum, one rhythm, nature’s rhythm, let’s beat it together!

I know what I need to do, but will you join me? It starts now…please follow on  facebook  or twitter to get this movement going and help the scientists promote their messages and evidence.